


The Shard

by Twelvefootmountaintroll



Series: Seven Stones [2]
Category: Avatar: Legend of Korra
Genre: Broh Week, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-07-31
Updated: 2012-07-31
Packaged: 2017-11-11 03:46:02
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,432
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/474158
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Twelvefootmountaintroll/pseuds/Twelvefootmountaintroll
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Bolin and Iroh take part in a strike force against the Equalists in the days after Amon's defeat.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Shard

**Author's Note:**

> Day two prompt: Protection.

Bolin strikes with a powerful jab and sends a block of stone ripped from the ground shooting into an approaching chi-blocker. His eyes are opened wide, his ears straining, and his heart beats a tattoo into his ribcage. The Equalist underground forts, courtesy one Hiroshi Sato, are dimly lit, and somehow Bolin has been separated from the rest of the strike force.

He sees a flickering out of the corner of his eye and spins with fists ready for action, but there is no one there. Instead, the flickering light flares again, revealing a firefight erupting from an adjacent corridor or room. He sets off toward it, staying alert for more chi-blockers.

Technically, Bolin shouldn’t be on the strike force. But the days following Amon’s downfall have been hectic; even with Commander Bumi’s reinforcements, the remainder of the Equalist uprising prove tricky to pin down. Bolin points out his merits as someone who has infiltrated Equalist territory before and a little more fast talking gets him out in the field. Just where he belongs.

Technically, General Iroh shouldn’t be there, either. This is work for police and front-line military personnel. He should be strategizing, rebuilding the city from above, not below. But his tumultuous arrival in Republic City reminded him of the thrill and danger to be found in fighting and he tells himself that he’s only making sure he’s still in shape.

Except he’s not certain that he really is. His right side burns with distracting knots of pain and his arm moves sluggishly. Neither can he coax it into producing fire. Staring into two masked, alien, and eerily emotionless chi-blockers’ faces, he thinks maybe he should have saved his training for military drills.

His mind races. A feint, perhaps? He swings his left fist viciously but conjures only a small, flickering flame. One of the chi-blockers dances forward and Iroh continues the circular motion of his swing, dropping low to sweep his leg under the Equalist. His opponent clears it easily, but he isn’t done. Feeling the full, rib-stretching capacity of his lungs, he opens his mouth wide and roars.

The chi-blocker is caught midair and goes soaring into a wall, colliding with an audible thud. The other spins away from the jet of flame and watches Iroh with a low, guarded stance. So focused is Iroh on this remaining foe that he has no warning when an Equalist wielding an electrified glove grabs his shoulder.

He is equally as unprepared for that Equalist to relinquish their grasp immediately. When they go flying away curled around a chunk of stone, his understanding shifts like his spinning field of vision—a glancing hit from an Equalist glove is still a serious one.

But it’s not until hears the voice that shouts, “General Iroh! Are you all right?” that he sees the whole picture. He rolls his head from his vantage point on the ground to see Bolin running up, fists ready to strike. He sends a one-two combo punch at the chi-blocker, who goes skittering around the flying stone.

Iroh turns over and pushes himself to his hands and knees. Bolin takes steady steps toward the chi-blocker, rocks torn from the ground hovering in front of him. The Equalist takes the bold strategy of charging Bolin. The latter sends his two chunks of stone flying, but they go astray. Bolin is left wide open.

Yet, like Iroh, he has tricks up his sleeve. When the chi-blocker is a single pace away, Bolin dives forward. His opponent leaps into the air to avoid tripping and Bolin seizes his opportunity. As he tucks his head under, he plants his hands on the ground; as he transitions to his shoulders and back, he rips two more blocks of stone out and uses his momentum to propel them upward. The chi-blocker falls hard.

Unfortunately, as Bolin seizes his opportunity, yet another Equalist chooses theirs. Darting from the shadows, they raise a gloved hand toward Bolin, who is climbing to his feet with his back turned to the approaching figure.

Iroh is faced with a dilemma. Striking, he risks burning Bolin (especially in his own dizzy state), but holding back, he risks the boy being exposed to a fatal shock or capture. (For Bolin is only a boy, he reminds himself—only 16.)

“Look out!” he shouts. But he can tell Bolin won’t be able to recover from his roll in time. Iroh slaps his functional hand against the ground, sending a wave of fire rolling out like a ripple in still water.

The wave hits the Equalist first, sending them sprawling into Bolin, who is spared from the fire. He stumbles but gains his footing back quickly and, grabbing the ungloved hand, throws the Equalist over his shoulder. The impact makes Iroh wince in sympathy.

Bolin hurries over, grabs Iroh under his arms, and helps him to his feet. “Wow, thanks! That Equalist almost fried me! Are you all right, sir? And where did you learn that incredible firebending move with your mouth?”

“Bolin, be quiet,” Iroh hisses. He leans heavily on the boy. His right side continues to ache, but now his left shoulder is filled with a sharp pain and his head continues to spin.

“Oop!” Bolin squeaks. “Sorry!”

“I’m okay for now, thank you. But we need to be extremely cautious until we can find the rest of the strike force.”

“Right.” Bolin nods.

“I’ve heard of earthbenders who can listen to the Earth with their feet—” Iroh trails off at the apologetic look on Bolin’s face. “Nevermind. Do you remember the way back to the entrance?”

“Of course! Do you think we should do something with these guys?”

Iroh glances at the two—no, three—no, four! (how did two become four?) Equalists sprawled across the floor. It would be a shame to have incapacitated them for nothing.

“Perhaps you can make some sort of restraints out of stone for them, temporarily?” he suggests.

“I’m on it.” With a gesture like he’s snatching a pesky bug out of the air, Bolin raises crude stone  arches over the prone Equalists’ wrists and ankles.

“This, way, sir,” Bolin says. He leads them toward the corridor he had come down, still supporting Iroh.

“You—you don’t have to call me ‘sir,’ you know,” Iroh says. “I’m not your commanding officer on this mission. In fact, I’m not your commanding officer at all, as you’re a civilian.”

“I know, but it’s just so exciting!” Bolin smiles at the older man. “Me, working with a big hotshot military man! I can’t help myself. Sir.”

“If that was you ‘working with’ me back there, I don’t think I want to know what you saving my ass would look like,” Iroh says with a groan. Bolin is strangely quiet after that.

After they have passed through several hallways, some verging on being called “tunnels,” they can hear voices coming from further ahead.

“Ah, I recognize that voice!” Iroh says. “One of the officers on my ship.”

“We made it back,” says Bolin.

As they approach the room, the voices die away. In the gloom, it’s hard to see anything beyond the hallway. But when they step over the threshold, everything blooms into white-hot, glaring heat; with no time to think, Bolin acts instinctively and, letting go of Iroh for a moment, he swings his fists upward to raise a wall of stone in front of them.

“Hold! Hold! Cease fire!” shouts a voice over the roar of the flames.

“What was that?” Bolin shouts back. “I’ve got an injured man here and you’re trying to attack us?

“Still doing okay, sir?” he asks, turning to Iroh. The latter is leaning against the wall Bolin had raised, having fallen there after struggling for balance momentarily without Bolin’s support.

“Absolutely wonderful,” Iroh responds.

Bolin grabs him again and lowers the wall. The stone doesn’t fit neatly back: a sliver of the wall breaks off and Iroh picks it up.

“Here,” he says, slipping it into Bolin’s hand. “A memento of the day you saved me twice.”

“You wouldn’t have needed saving if you hadn’t come out of the tunnel we were sweeping the Equalists toward,” says the man who had shouted for the cease fire.

“Oh! Is that why no one went down that hallway earlier? Whoops. Make that once,” Bolin addresses the last part to Iroh. “Which makes us even.”

“If you don’t mind,” Iroh says, “I might pass out now.”

So when the healers tell Bolin to stop hovering, he feels the stone in his palm and wonders.


End file.
